A Map of the ‘Flat’ Earth

A Map of the Square and Stationary Earth

In June of 2011, the Library of Congress acquired an old map which was created by Prof. Orlando Ferguson in 1893. The information it contains is a bit out of date… but it is very interesting to look at nonetheless.

The text can be a hard to read, so here it is, verbatim:

Header: Map of the Square and Stationary Earth.

Subheader: Four hundred passages in the Bible condemn the Globe Theory, or the Flying Earth, and none sustain it. This map is the Bible Map of the World.

Caption (right side): These men are flying on the globe at the rate of 65,000 miles per hour around the sun, and 1,042 miles per hour around the center of the earth (in their minds). Think of that speed! (this caption was clearly meant to be a sarcastic jab to the Globe Theory)

Footnote: Send 25 cents to the author, Prof. Orlando Ferguson, for a book explaining this Square and Stationary Earth. It knocks the Globe Theory clean out. It will teach you how to foretell eclipses. It is worth its weight in gold.

The Flat Earth Society (yes, it’s actually real)

The Flat Earth Society is a real organization led by a Virginian man named Daniel Shenton. Shenton believes in other scientific principles and facts, such as evolution and global warming, but he and his followers also believe that the Earth is a disc that you can fall off of. In other words, that it’s flat.

“I haven’t taken this position just to be difficult,” Shenton told The Guardian news a while back. “To look around, the world does appear to be flat, so I think it is incumbent on others to prove decisively that it isn’t. And I don’t think that burden of proof has been met yet.”

In fact, the validity of the organization as come in to question so often that it’s immediately addressed on the first line of the FAQ:

Q: “Is this site a joke?”

A: This site is not a joke. We are actively promoting the Flat Earth movement worldwide. There are members who seriously believe the Earth is flat, and their research is located in Flat Earth Believers.

Read through their FAQ, as they “explain” the seasons, sunrises, sunsets, and other phenomena.

Here’s a map of the flat Earth that they present:

I’m not sure where to start when debunking the notion of a flat Earth, because the theory seems so unrealistic. So I will only present one piece of evidence for the round Earth, and it’s a simple picture: